The Time Has Come To Fire Up The Propaganda Machine And Remind All NBA Voters That Jaylen Brown Is A Forward

Maddie Meyer. Getty Images.

Ah yes, it's NBA Award Campaigning season already! These are always fun to see this time of year, and the pitches seem to be getting more and more creative with each passing season. Every team that has a player who is up for an NBA Award does this, and I have no idea how much this actually impacts the voter's decision, but human nature tells me if you have a good gift/pitch then that's going to stick in the minds of the people who are responsible for casting their vote. There's a reason teams do this and I can't imagine it's just because they have some extra marketing money laying around.

As we know, PR helps with this stuff. As long as you have the basketball case as well, a PR push can be what gets you over the finish line. I say this as someone who lived through this

We're going to see the Celts do the same thing with Malcolm Brogdon's 6th Man Of The Year candidacy, and whether or not that's enough for him to win it over Immanuel Quickley is anyone's guess. I'd say there'll also be a Tatum MVP campaign but ya know…those days have been over for quite some time now.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. While it's not an NBA Award, it's time for the us as Celts fans and the team themselves to fire up the propaganda when it comes to Jaylen Brown's All NBA case. This is nothing that doesn't need any basketball spinzoning, his play has absolutely been All NBA worthy

15th in the NBA in scoring (as a #2 offensive option, that is not true of any guy outside of Kyrie/Booker in the top 15), a solid 26.7/6.9/3.4 on 49.2/34.4% splits with 2.5 3PM, you might think he's an absolute lock right?

Well, it's complicated.

As is so often the case with All NBA, the fact that the NBA is still operating in the stone age and keeps things by position, there leaves room for a potential issue. You may remember a few years ago when Jayson Tatum missed out on All NBA (and $30M), becaue he split votes between "guard" and "forward". How that makes any goddamn sense I have no idea, because I'm pretty sure Jayson Tatum is not and has never been a "guard"

The same thing is going to happen to Jaylen I imagine. He's going to be eligible as both a "guard" and a "forward" even though anyone who has watched this team this season knows Jaylen Brown has not been a SG. Derrick White has started 61 games this season, which moves Jaylen to the 3. He's spent 57% of his minutes this season at SF, which to me says he's a forward this year. Unfortunately, people don't probably watch all the Celts games and he does have 40% of his minutes at SG, so there's absolutely the potential for him to split votes among the two spots.

That could get pretty dicey considering what's on the line when it comes to these All NBA teams

Getting that potential supermax is a pretty big deal when it comes to Jaylen's future, and even if they can still offer more money without the supermax compared to others, maybe it's close enough where Jaylen doesn't care. Nobody turns down supermax money, so you can see why this is an important vote.

I don't want to sound too extreme, but if Jaylen is going to be mostly considered a guard, he's got no shot at All NBA. The guard position is just way too deep. Guys like Steph, Luka, Ja, Mitchell, SGA, Trae Young, Harden, Fox, Kyrie etc, getting into the top 6 in that group isn't all that realistic.

But forward? It's hard to keep Jaylen out of that group. Guys like Giannis/Tatum are locks and most likely take the 2 forward spots on 1st team. From there you have guys like Jimmy Butler, Lauri Markkanen, Sabonis (maybe? unless he's a C), Siakam, DeRozan (he was a forward last year). I think given the injuries to LeBron/Kawhi/PG13/KAT/Booker/KD etc, this is clearly the best path for Jaylen, and when you list out all the names it's hard to pick 6 other "forwards" that would be more worthy than the season Jaylen is currently having.

So that is why it is now on us to make sure we unleash all the propaganda it takes for voters to understand that Jaylen is not a guard this year. My hope is that he's not even eligible, but if Tatum was a few years ago, Jaylen will be too. 

As of now, so far I have this blog and the very much work in progress hashtag of #JaylenBrownIsAForward. I'll admit, that one doesn't really pop so I'm open to suggestions. We as fans basically won Smart his DPOY, so I feel like getting Jaylen onto All NBA should be relatively easy. My thing is, if someone like Jimmy Butler is considered a forward and he had 57% of his minutes at SF this year, then how on earth can Jaylen not be considered a forward who also has 57% of his minutes at SF. Seems like a no brainer to me (I think Butler makes it, he'll have around mid 60s in games played). 

Perhaps one day we'll live in a world where the NBA actually wakes up and realizes that not having All NBA be positionless is maybe the stupidest thing they do. Who cares about positions! You're telling me one of Jokic/Embiid/Giannis isn't a top 5 player in the NBA? One of those guys is going to get snubbed to 2nd team because you can't have two centers? How on earth does that make any sense? Let's say Jaylen gets snubbed, you're telling me the 3rd team center is having a better season than Jaylen? No chance.

Until that happens though, we need to get the agenda out there. Jaylen Brown is a forward. Period, end of discussion.